Isn’t it a bother having to think about making a living all the time? There’s so much more we could be doing with our time than working for the Man — but here we are, dedicating the best years of our lives, and the best time of each weekday, doing boring stuff to put food on the table and a roof over our heads.

I fire off volleys of job applications whenever I can, ever optimistic, seldom responded to; Daniela is currently driving the narrow old B52 highway every day to Canberra; both of our boys are freshly graduated and negotiating the scary terrain of first-job land. They’re at that painful stage where they still believe our jobs define us: “I’m an accountant,” someone will say, rather than father, husband, dedicated weekend fisherman or whatever. Could we have our priorities all awry?

Well, all I can say is, don’t come to me for advice. My career path has been a series of random swerves, with periods of indecision and casting desperately about, interspersed with extended stints of slaving ungodly hours for global vampire octopus-like organisations.

In the words of The Boss, “Like a river that don’t know where it’s goin’ / I took a wrong turn and I just kept goin’.”

All this is a preamble to a new series of heart-stopping, action-packed accounts under the general umbrella of “weird jobs I have had.”

As ever, there won’t be any lessons for those lost in the search for a meaningful occupation, other than perhaps “don’t do what I did — do the opposite.”

So having wasted three perfectly good paragraphs to get to this point, which unexpected, often unskilled and underpaid position should we start with — house sitter? Maybe not. Temporary stock market settlements documentation sorter? Been there. Architect’s model-builder? 40-somethings’ singles-club chef and barman? Not mentioned on the old CV, but earnestly endeavoured along the way in the expectation of monetary compensation.

Of course, if I had enough readers, I could turn this over to them and give them a list of jobs to vote for. The ones with the most votes would be recounted in separate posts. So how about this? In keeping with the theme of randomness that pervades your author’s résumé, let us tackle these in no particular order.

And in the meantime, to fill out sufficient pars for a post that lasts longer than the average tiktok video, try to guess which of these is not a genuine, bona fide job what I have done:

1. Unpaid rock concert security guard
2. Child minder and luncheon cook
3. Freelance job interview scribe
4. Building-site labourer
5. Tall & skinny clothing model

Yes, you’ve guessed it — the last one never happened.

It could have: once, while trying on leather jackets we could never afford in a chic boutique we shouldn’t have entered, my girlfriend and I were approached by a heavily made-up woman in a floral kaftan who said, “why aren’t you lovely tall and skinny people signed up with my modelling agency?” With dollar signs and visions of summers in Milan and GQ covers (in my case) flashing before our eyes, we indicated that yes, we’d very much like to sign up with her agency.

Alas, it was a scam. Before being discovered, becoming famous, and baring all to the world’s adoring gaze, we had to pay a substantial sum for a photographer to take a series of portfolio shots. A photographer, need I add, introduced by and ‘connected’ in a financial way to kaftan lady. Being impecunious students — and smelling a rat as well — we declined.

But much as I despise a story with a moral, perhaps there is a ‘takeaway’, as management consultants like to say of meetings, from this experience. And that is, no matter how much you plan and scheme, opportunities often — possibly usually — come at you from unexpected angles. A bit like romance. You just have to be ready to recognise the good ones and not go off at too many tangents.